Poetry By Srinithi Muthu

Happiness

Happiness bathes in sunlight
Her skin would glisten and sparkle like diamonds if only she’d let it
The wind would catch her hair and let it float elegantly
mimicking the soft waves of the ever so blue ocean,
if only she’d let it down
And her dress
would fall gracefully along her body
if only she’d wear it with confidence
For she has the elegance and the ethereal beauty,
for which she longs in eternal futility
Happiness laughs in grief
Happiness cries in love
Happiness echoes, echoes in the dark
Happiness is the moon, a waxing crescent ever glowing in the darks of heaven
Happiness is a diamond that sparkles
against the solemn light of the gibbous
If you’re my happiness why can’t you be yours ?

Poetry By Emanuela Meneghelli

THE OM OF THE ETERNAL RETURN

I am certainly no poet with a license to kill.
By day, my aching hands fertilize the parched earth,
by night, on the keys, they wring out anguish seeking ways out,
a density adequate enough to keep me from sinking.

I watched the worms today, they are tireless, never stopping.
You find them in constant motion, tangled in organic waste,
devouring scraps, dung, and every other blessing,
transforming them, defying extreme consumerism like brave titanic heroes.

The usefulness of a worm highlights our evolutionary disharmony.
The Om of eternal return, held in check by a collective amnesia,
is sung with empathy by the Earth at every dawn, at every sunset,
but the echo of the song shatters, like a wave, against our self-interest.

If the earth had a soul, if it were capable of sustainable ethics,
it would change, without delay, the human scum into compostable waste,
etching into history an elegy of dung, a symbol of new humanity,
capable of acts of solidarity, to replenish this severed biodiversity.

Poetry By NN Benn

the last antipasti

broccoli can’t be a prize,

everyone says,

or would say

if inquired of.

but my stem’s tender

as a lover’s thighs,

crunchy with salt,

drenched in rendered

fat, yum

pair me with focaccia

and dipstick me

in extra virgin

verging on

extravagant…

a celebrity

of humble bent

mind the the time

you over-ordered carbohydrates

a panicked salad reprobate

arancini, croquettes and chips,

you had a need that i could sate

pumped with protein

and polyphenols

light and taut

and a little bit special

trust me,

flake almonds upon me,

indulge in fulgent greens

i confound your troubles

with salubrious sheen

there is no knowledge

but sensation

so slide on in

to my dm’s

the merlot refill

unexpectedly chilled,

effervescent on your tongue

makes you cry yum, yum

confidence is recklessness

incarnate

so crunch my fibrous branches

so delicate

are you here for sublime?

or did you get lost looking for

the beige light district?

over by the camp

but closeted quarter?

oh yeah have another breadstick,

fill up on brie

i know you’ll be back for me

perhaps i can attract

one of your more

stylish companions

i grew in the alluvial

soils of campania,

learned english from hollywood movies,

reared on volcanic aqua minerale

and the sun’s patterns

you, with the specs,

you don’t wanna eat yet?

i can feel i’m cold.

was it yesterday? really yesterday?

bathing in the sunshine

when yanked,

quite jolted,

held tight in a gauntlet

flung in a crate,

i’ve been in the shade,

a day, who knows

they seared me!

and i’m here,

with the almonds,

but the plate’s cold.

all the sundried tomatoes are gone

the salami too

even the mortadella

oh, love may be king

in napoli

but fortune favours

brocolli

yes someone will

come back for me

i remember

when i was young sprout

thinking that if i was the first human

it would never have occurred to me

to eat food

or make love

that was an absurd thought

for a cruciferous vegetable, i know

but come on and eat me,

end this limbo

let me go

my whole life

flashes before my florets

i’m sliding off the plate

into the wastebasket

into the bin

a cardinal sin

and you know

i don’t see any chips in here,

you philistines.

i am a prize!

how did this happen to me?

am i weird looking,

or weird being?

you reach the top

you’re hot

and then you’re not

just one shot

then you’re compost.

it’ll happen to you too

one day.

memento mori.

i regret nothing.

Poetry By Christopher Couch

rather plainly sung

I don’t know what you want

but

I think that is because of me

because my vision isn’t clear even

to re-read

what

you direct

and my hearing isn’t sharp enough against

all the other noise

that

intrudes

and keeps quiet contemplation out

and for what I eat

smell

before eating

and

what I touch of all the layers of

distraction in the world

anything that might impede

clarity

let alone a smidgen of the peace that passes

understanding

I might live more fully

and know love when I have it or it’s near

and so give

as well as receive

everything that gets in the way

and

or course

we always make mistakes

but still

a touch easier would be relieving

clear out the senses

at least some

so that love and need shall

shall

get through to make and fortify

the loving impulse

its interest

and

agenda

which is here all the time

Poetry By Lynn White

Nothing

In those streets
of men and boys,
in that country
for men and boys,
she feels like a person with no face,
her face space covered,
her identity occupied
by a swirling mist of confusion
like nothingness being born.
Sometimes
she wishes for a blank space
that she could fill herself
with a Magritte apple
or even a woman
even herself
un-blanked
and visible.
Now, in those streets
of men and boys,
in that country
for men and boys,
she feels like a person with no voice,
Magritte’s apple is choking her,
muting her
so even in her home she whispers
her songs and curses.
Only in her head does she shout
that something will come of nothing,
that something must come of nothing.

Poetry By Joshua Walker

The Man Who Mows the Cemetery

Every Thursday morning
a man mows the cemetery.

By noon
he has walked past more names
than most of us will remember in a lifetime.

From the road
it looks like landscaping.

Just another maintenance job.

A machine.
A patch of grass.
A paycheck.

But if you watch long enough,
you notice things.

How he slows near the older stones.

How he trims carefully around flowers
left by people who still visit.

How he stops sometimes
to set a fallen flag upright.

No one tells him to do that.

No supervisor is standing nearby
with a clipboard.

The dead are not difficult customers.

They never complain.

Never ask for anything.

Still,
he works as though someone is watching.

Last summer I asked him why.

He shut off the mower.

Looked across the rows of markers.

And shrugged.

Because somebody should.

That was all.

Then he started the engine again
and disappeared into the noise.

I stood there longer than necessary,
thinking about how many parts of the world
continue functioning

because somewhere
a person nobody notices

has decided
to care.

Poetry By Andrew Cyr

Same Block, Different Clocks

The streets glistened
under downpour,
hickory branches swaying,
breeze over the lake.

At a friend’s party—
faces I barely knew.

Nostalgia warmed me.
I sensed her first:
Natalia, sweet vanilla.

I pinched myself.

Years since high school.
My old sweetheart,
mind racing.
A lump in my throat,
black-and-white photos
above the fireplace.

Her breath—cigarettes.

We loved in her uncle’s basement—
life beginning,
nothing left to imagine.
Maroon couch, Keith Sweat,
caught redhanded.

Secrets surfaced
when the door
unlocked our hiding.

Our parents sat us down:
too young for love.

Parents split us,
avoiding sin.
Same block, different clocks.
Lost my keys
after her summer call,
backseat empty
in bed
instead.

After high school,
we drifted to different
states for college—
life returned us to the party—
heart still beats for her.

She tucked her bangs.
Missing me, her only regret.
Leaving—worse than a funeral.

Don’t fix us.
Purity culture twisted us
called unwed love impure.

We aren’t broken.

The worst is done,
nothing tarnishes
what we’ve polished.

Regret forgot to say:
It’s good to be alive.

I’ll sing at our wedding.

She blushes us back to life.

Poetry By Ivan Pozzoni

WRITING WILL COME LIKE A HEART ATTACK ON AN AUTUMN NIGHT

Writing will come again, countless times, in life,
sweeping away colonels like a revolution,
throwing every admiral overboard,
it will come again to brand the backs of hands
stamped by the ardor of embers,
to dust off mechanics sealed inside a coffin,
artists gripping, between dead fingers, wrench keys,
and it will come again, as punctual as the schedule of a hearse.

Writing will come, rinsing cassocks and babydolls
in the muddy tides of tsunamis,
submerging every reaction in the frenetic atony of waiting,
dragging away, in the undertow’s oscillation, somatic encrustations,
insatiable feelings, illness-induced stress, dreams / projects,
frustrations of labor flexibility, new loves,
irrigating the wreckage submerged in our pockets
as men of the city.

Writing will come like a heart attack on an autumn night,
it will come by vanishing, without granting us the daring to consent,
and it will vanish by arriving,
condemning us to remain empty-handed.

Poetry By Drew Martin

“Ghosts of Ireland”

At night along the railroad ties
We broke our backs to lay
Nursin’ blisters from a fat old sun
In a sixteen-hour day
They don’t pay us much at all
And we drink more than we earn
But at least we ain’t down in the mines
Or the fires of hell that burn

The city sleeps in silence now
As we walk along our beat
Could be New York, could be Boston
Could be any town and street
They never tip a cap
Or say thank you in a peaceful time
But those ungrateful bastards
Curse us at the slightest crime

When the waves rocked us back and forth
And we heard the babies cry
We had no idea if we’d see
The shore before we die
I don’t know how we made it
But we made it all the same
Got here on a hope and prayer
Without a penny to our name.